On Wed, 21 Apr 2004 14:49:51 +0100 (BST), Prof Brian Ripley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >> What symptoms >> make you think getenv() is broken? > >Because it is the result from getenv that is tested in 1.9.0 and not in >1.8.1. The error message from 1.9.0 is generated iff getenv returns an >overlong string for HOMEDRIVE or HOMEPATH, or a null string for HOMEPATH. >We can discard the last being true in the environment, as it works if the >patch is backed out (as I understand it). So getenv must suddenly be >returning an incorrect result (or something very catastrophic happens to >end up jumping to that error message, but let's look for simple >explanations first). > >> My suspicion about the reported problems would be the usual suspects: >> anti-virus software, keyboard accelerators, virus infection, etc. > >Or in this case we have been told by David Scott and less unequivocably >by others, Microsoft critical updates. What I meant is that there seems to be some interaction between those updates and something else, and the usual suspects would be the ones I listed. (And another suspect I forgot: getenv is in the MSVCRT dll, and the version of that probably varies from system to system.) Since you and I don't get the errors, it's not *only* the updates that are causing problems. I think it would be helpful if the affected users tried your suggestion of setting the environment variables explicitly. Here's more detail on how: Change the command line that invokes R to explicitly set the environment variables, e.g. change the shortcut to have target [Rhome]\Rgui.exe HOMEDRIVE=C: If this works, then it would indicate to me that the environment Windows is passing to R is messed up somehow. If someone with the error gets in touch with me offline, I could send them a little program to examine the environment block and see if there's something wrong with it. Duncan Murdoch ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html